The boss is gone but the issues at crisis-hit VCAA run deep, insiders reveal

Bureaucrats, teachers, experts and political figures have spoken out about the 2024 VCE exam leaks and the subsequent cover-up by the troubled curriculum authority — and they say the problems run deep.

The clumsy rewriting of exams using 2024 practice exams is also attracting condemnation in Art, Legal Studies and Media subjects.

The Herald Sun can reveal an obscure artwork referenced in a question in the Art Creative Practice 2024 exam was lifted directly from a 2024 practice exam by commercial company TSSM.

The artwork, Bad Lemon (Lichen), by American Artist Kathleen Ryan, is owned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Two questions on the same exam, Q1 and Q8, were leaked, requiring a hasty rewrite. Similarly, a 19-mark question from the 2024 VCE Legal Studies exam was on the same topic — the electric vehicles tax — as a question from the TSSM 2024 practice exam.

The Media exam has also attracted additional condemnation, with revelations that a 15-point question leaked on the cover sheet by the exam authority ended up on the final exam.

In addition, another 10-point question about science fiction has already come under scrutiny, for including material not in the study design.

More leaks and questions copied from other practice exams can be revealed

As well, a three-mark question at the start of the exam was so poorly worded that even teachers couldn’t understand it, meaning 28 out of the exam’s 80 marks were compromised.

Peter Anstee, chair of the Australian Teachers of Media Victoria, said: “there is not enough funding for the VCAA to appoint proper subject-specific experts to support exam development”.

“We feel there was a rushed sense to the exam with some confusing questions and one that seemed out of place.

“The issue is that it is harder for the VCAA to find the right candidates to work on the exam as the time commitment is not reflected in the pay,” he said.

A spokeswoman for TSSM said the company “would have been very happy to re-write any questions that were compromised in confidence”.

A VCAA spokeswoman said the authority “works closely with subject matter experts in the development of all examinations to ensure examination content is produced to a high-quality standard”.

One student who sat the affected exams in Media, Legal Studies, English and Food Studies said she was furious the assessment authority hadn’t learned from its past mistakes.

“I’m more angry than anything because it’s the third year in a row the VCAA has made a mistake in the exams,” she said.

“What’s more upsetting is people get tutors and spend so much time trying to work hard, just for there to be a stuff-up,” she said.

The clumsy rewriting of exams using 2024 practice exams is also attracting condemnation in Art, Legal Studies and Media subjects.

The boss is gone but the issues run deep

“Sacking the boss won’t stop the rot,” one Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority insider said this week.

The Herald Sun spoke to dozens of bureaucrats, teachers, VCE subject experts and political figures about the 2024 VCE exam leaks and the subsequent cover-up by the troubled curriculum authority.

The consensus is that problems in the VCAA go deeper than former CEO Kylie White, who suddenly resigned days after the Herald Sun revealed extensive leaks in the 2024 VCE exams by the authority itself.

A picture emerges of an organisation plump with highly paid executives and not enough staff doing the essential work of setting and marking exams.

“The parts of the organisation that are broken were broken when Kylie arrived.”

Ms White’s resignation on November 16 was greeted with shock by many, who felt she was poorly advised by the Department of Education executive communications team led by Stuart Teather.

Former VCAA chief Kylie White resigned days after the Herald Sun revealed extensive leaks in the 2024 VCE exams by the authority itself.

“The staff are feeling shocked as Kylie was well liked and respected, and this now will lead to more trouble, more change,” one insider said.

But Ms White’s denial of the extent of the leaks after they were exposed by the Herald Sun, and the political need to protect Education Minister and deputy premier Ben Carroll, made her demise inevitable.

“They needed a scalp to save the others,” said one source.

The organisation’s leadership team otherwise remains intact despite years of blunders. It includes an acting CEO, four executive directors, four directors, a senior adviser, two project directors, an assessment adviser and a principal psychometrician.

The VCAA has just 236 permanent staff, although this number swells by around 5000 casuals each year brought in for exam supervision and marking.

Teachers are amazed that many of the executives, with whom they battled in 2022 and 2023 to get exam errors recognised, still have jobs.

“You can’t sack people, that’s the real problem,” she said.

“They will clearly be feeling the pressure.

Many say the problems started under former CEO Stephen Gniel, who took on the top job in August 2020.

The political need to protect Education Minister and deputy premier Ben Carroll, made Ms White’s demise inevitable.

Following a career as a bureaucrat, Mr Gniel got the VCAA CEO role after he missed out on the plum role of deputy secretary of the Department of Education back in August 2020.

His professional nemesis David Howes was appointed instead.

Howes, one staffer said, “is smart and he has the goods”.

Despite presiding over two years’ worth of errors in exams in maths and chemistry, among other bungles, Mr Gniel fell upwards to the national position of the CEO of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), the home of NAPLAN.

They said Mr Gniel was aware of the deficiencies of the VCAA’s exam setting unit, and asked for more staff, but this was turned down in favour of redeploying existing staff.

Despite the organisation’s $107m budget and surplus of $13m in 2023-4, insiders insist a lack of adequate funding where it’s needed is a major source of the VCAA’s problems.

“It’s still an issue of the exam unit being grossly under-resourced and Carroll and the department doing nothing more than announcing another inquiry,” one staffer said.

Staff are frustrated that exam development units are responsible for co-ordinating 10 exams with staff on mid-level wages. “This is why these stuff-ups keep occurring,” one said.

“They’re overwhelmed.”

Many say the problems started under former CEO Stephen Gniel, who took on the top job in August 2020. Picture: Ian Currie

Meanwhile, another source said other areas of the organisation were “bloated with staff”.

The VCAA has also put considerable time and resources into the Victorian Curriculum F–10 revision project and the Digital Assessment Library, taking staff away from core functions of setting and running exams. As one VCAA staffer explained, “these problems will persist if nothing is done to address the imbalance of resourcing”.

With exam results for the state’s 80,000 VCE students due to arrive on December 12, there is heightened concern about the impact of the leaks on student marks and university offers.

In state parliament this week, Labor and the Greens united to vote down an Opposition motion to refer the exam leaks to the Ombudsman Marlo Baragwanath.

Unless the Ombudsman herself accepts an invitation to review the leaks, many feel there will be little accountability or change.

So is there any hope that Mr Carroll’s “root and branch review” of the authority will change anything?

One insider said that “unless the minister uses the review to create wholesale change, then sacking the CEO is not going to fix the problem.”

“Carroll has been reasonably activist in acknowledging this shit show that was already there when he got there,” they said.

“He followed a weak Minister in Natalie Hutchins. But still, he knew about the leaks back in October and didn’t do much then.”

Ms Hutchins, who after an early blunder was rarely allowed to front the media pack at press conferences, lasted just over a year as Education Minister.

“The new review could help, but it depends how deep and how far back they are willing to go,” one source said.

“The last review clearly didn’t do much, did it?”